GEORGETOWN, Guyana, CMC—The United States is benignly investigating a gold smuggling operation involving Columbia, Venezuela, and Guyana.
Former Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman disclosed this, saying the investigation started during the previous People’s Progressive Party Civic (PPPC) administration.
In a statement on Saturday, Trotman said that a local investigation by the A Partnership for National Unity+Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) coalition administration was scrapped when the PPP returned to office in 2020.
“Some time afterward, the Ministry of the Presidency ordered and initiated its intelligence-led operation, with a unique nickname, to curb gold smuggling and transnational crime. I am reliably informed that this operation was shut down within five days of the new administration taking office in August 2020,” Trotman said.
He said it appeared that the current sanctions arose out of a separate investigation that ran for just over two years, just prior to the sanctions announcements by the US Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control.
On Friday, US Ambassador Nicole Theriot said the US government did not share any information about the investigation into Nazar “Shell” Mohamed and his son, Azruddin, as well as Permanent Secretary Mae Thomas, in keeping with the same rules that would apply in the US.
“They have to keep these investigations very close hold because anyone can compromise them, and so we tend not to share a lot of information until the investigation reaches a certain stage, and so I regret that people feel they’ve been left in the dark, but in the United States, it would be the same way. If we are investigating someone accused of corruption in the United States, we would not share that information until the investigation was at a stage where that was possible,” she told reporters.
The US Treasury Department alleged that between 2019 and 2023, Mohamed’s Enterprise omitted more than 10,000 kilograms of gold from import and export declarations and avoided paying more than $50 million in duty taxes to the Government of Guyana.
Trotman said at that time, US agents were concerned mainly that gold mined in Guyana, Venezuela, and Colombia was being illegally shipped from and through Guyana to the US. “Most concerning was the belief that the proceeds of the sale of this gold were financing activities that were very inimical to the security and interests of the United States. This was not a corruption investigation only,” he said Mr Trotman, who studied Defense Planning & Resources Management at the US National Defense University.
The then Natural Resources Minister said the US agents related that they were then authorized to share such information with representatives of the then government because “in the past, there were serious concerns about confidences being kept and sensitive investigations being compromised by the government of Guyana officials.”
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